Mediman: an object oriented programming approach for medical image analysis

Mediman is a new image analysis package which has been developed to analyze quantitatively positron emission tomography (PET) data. It is object-oriented, it is written in C++, and its user interface is based on InterViews on top of which new classes have been added. Mediman accesses data using external data representation or an import/export mechanism which avoids data duplication. Multimodality studies are organized in a sample database which includes images, headers, color tables, lists and objects of interest (OOIs), and history files. Stored color table parameters allow focusing directly on the interesting position of the dynamic range. Lists allow the organization of the study according to modality, acquisition protocol, and time and spatial properties. OOIs (points, lines, and regions) are stored in absolute 3D coordinates allowing correlation with other coregistered imaging modalities. The benefits of the object-oriented approach are discussed from a development point of view